DOCUMENTATION FOR STUDY OF 1,307 FARMERS IN BRAZIL



DOCUMENTATION FOR STUDY OF 1,307 FARMERS IN BRAZIL

TABLE OF CONTENTS

BACKGROUND……………………………………………………………………………...…ii

SAMPING PROCEDURES……………………………………………………………………..iii

CODEBOOK DESCRITION…………………………………………………………………….v

BIBLIOGRAPHY……………………………………………………………………………..…ix

DIFFUSION PROJECT STAFF………………………………………………………………….x

PUBLICATION LIST FOR DIFFUSION PROJECT………………………………………….xiii

CODEBOOK…………………………………………………………………………………xviii

TECHNICAL INFORMATION ABOUT THE TAPE…………………………………………69

TECHNICAL INFORMATION ABOUT THE DATA…………………………………………69

HARD COPY OF BEGINNING AND END OF FILE…………………………………………70

BACKGROUND

This study of Brazilian farmers is part of a broader research project concerned with the spread of modern technology in Brazil, Nigeria and India. “Diffusion of Innovation in Rural Societies” was conducted under contract between the United States Agency for International Development and Michigan State University, with Everett M. Rogers as project director (Rogers 1970). The project in Brazil was carried out with the cooperation of the Federal University of Minas Gerais.

In each of the three nations of research was carried out in three phases. This division of the project is described as follows in the report on the second phase of the Nigeria research:

In addressing ourselves to the problem of communicating new ideas to farmers, we have delineated three major interrelated components, which are needful of careful research. These are identified as the agricultural extension agents, the peasant farmers and the ideas, which are transacted between them. These three components correspond t the three phases of the study conducted in each of the three countries. Phase I concerns itself with determining characteristics of the extension agent, his communication methods, and his contact with village leaders and peasants farmers with a view to establishing the correlates of change agent (or extension agent, A.S./ F.C.) success. Phase II is focused primarily upon determining personal and behavioral characteristics of the peasant farmer with a view mainly to explaining his behavior in adopting or failing to adopting or failing to adopt innovations. Phase III attempts to manipulate, to some extent, the messages exchanged between the extension worker and the peasant farmer with a view to determining extension worker and the peasant farmers with a view to determining effective strategies of communicating new idea to farmers. The social situation or context in which the three phases have been conducted is a village unit, the characteristics of which were examined during the conduct of Phase I (Ascroft et al. 1969:3-4)

The data presented here is on 1,307 farmers in 20 villages studies in Phase II of the Brazilian study. The other two data sets from Phase II of the Diffusion Project are included in this data bank as “1, 142 Farmers in Nigeria” an d”676 Farmers in India.” The complete lists of Diffusion Project staff and publications (Rogers 1970:A-1 to B-5) are included below for convenient reference.

The range of variable covered in the present study is displayed on page 1 below and also on page vii and viii. The findings of the Brazil study are summarized in Herzog et al. 1968. Those of the three nations project are summarized in Rogers 1970.

SAMPLING PROCEDURES

Rogers, in his project on the three country project, say:

…A list of villages in which agricultural development programs were underway was obtained form the major agricultural change agency in each of the region (states) of study. In Brazil, this agency was ACAR, an agricultural extension service that offered supervised credit to farmers…

Each local agricultural change agent (an ACAR supervisor in Brazil, an Extension Officer in Nigeria, and a village level workers or VLW in India) was asked by our Project staff to identify: 91) their most successful, and (2) their least successful village. “Success” was operationally defined for these local change agent in terms of the degree to which the villages had adopted innovations that the change agent had promoted in recent years. So each change agent that we had selected in the previous sampling step, nominated a pair of villages (one a ‘success,’ one a ‘failure’). This resulted in 76 villages in Brazil, 71 in Nigeria, and 108 in India.

At Phase II and Phase III, we choose villages from the total sample of Phase I villages, thus taking advantages of the information we gained from our Phase I data-gathering. The exact procedures for village selection in Phase II and III varied by country on the basis of social, cultural, and organizational considerations. The 20 Phase II villages in Brazil were selected with the Phase III field experiments in mind, so that they were 91) roughly matched in pairs as to community size, (2) within reasonable travel access to Project headquarters in Belo Horizonte, and (3) within the broadcasting range of a single radio station (to facilitate the introduction of radio listening forums in Phase III) (Rogers 1970:2-41 to 2-42).

Herzog et al, (1968:9) say:

University students were given interviewer training and set out in supervised teams to administer interview schedules to farmers in the 20 communities. Their instructions were to interview, in each community, all farmers who owned at least part of the lead that they operated, made the major decisions for that particular form and were not absentee landowners. A total of 1,307 useable interviews were gathered during July and August, 1966.

We are also including four pages 9see immediately below) from the Brazil “Code-book Description” which give more detail information on some aspect of design and planning of data gathering. Appendix B of Herzog et al. 1968 provides a full review of the Phase Ii methodology.

DIFFUSION PROJECT-BRAZIL

CODE-BOOK DESCRIPTION

PHASE II (PROJECT NUMBER 712)

N=1,307 Cards 1-7

Following the conclusion of the Phase I data-gathering, a purposive selection of 20 communities was made from among the 76 communities studies in Phase I. The selection criteria derived from our intention to use these same communities in Phase III, when varying communication strategies would be used to introduce innovations in the different communities. Therefore, it way necessary to achieve some matching on community size, transportation access, and availability to mass media.

The purpose of Phase II dictated in large measure the manner in which communities were selected for study. Among other considerations, Phase II data were to serve as a base-line for the experiments to be conducted in Phase III. In other words, the communities selected in Phase III. Only one treatment could be carried out in each community. To have a true experiment, treatment conditions had to be randomly assigned to communities. Therefore, all communities selected in Phase II had to be, as nearly as possible, equally suited as sites for any of the treatment planned for Phase III.

There were four Phase III treatment (plus a control), and they were designed to cross-cut each other so that certain treatment combination could be investigated. The first set of treatment (Set A) consisted of literacy training and a community development program known as “animation”. The second set (Set B) consisted of radio farm forums and community newspaper. These two sets cross-cut each other such that a pair of communities would receive each combination of literacy-radio, literacy-newspaper, animation-radio, animation-newspapers and the control (see Figure B-1).

In addition, the Phase III design stipulated that half of the communities should be communities designed by the local ACAR agents as communities of greater ACAR success and half of them communities of lesser ACAR success. This mean that an equal number of high success communities and of low success communities had to be chosen.

FIGURE 1: RANDOM ASSIGNMENT OF LOCAL ARAC OFFICES TO PHASE III TREATMETN CONDTIONS

Treatment Set “A”

|Treatment Set “B”: |ANIMATION |LITERACY |CONTROL |

|RADIO FARM FORUMS |Divinopolis (43) |Itauna |Tres Coracoes |

| |Bicas (23) |Pedro Leopoldo |Cordisburgo |

|COMMUNITY NEWSPAPER |San Joan Nepomuceno |Santos Dumont (22) |Formiga |

| |San Joao del Rei |Cataguases (71) |Sets Lagoas (31) |

|CONTROL |Tocantins |Paraopeba (30) |Tres pontas (10) |

| |Uba |Corinto |Rio Novo (24) |

The first, or upper, community in each cell was rated ‘high success” with past ACAR programs. The second, or lower, community had a “low success” rating. Thus each treatment, and all combinations of treatment, had randomly assigned to them, one “high success” and one “low success” community.

Subject within the 18 communities selected for study were selected on the basis of the following criteria:

1) They should be a major decision maker for a particular farm.

2) They should be an integral part of the community.

3) They should own at least part of the land they worked.

4) They should not be absentee landowners.

PHASE II VARIABLES

(Contents of interview schedule “A” dated June 27, 1966)

|Variables |Question Numbers |Card |COL. |Page |

|Achievement Motivation |57 |3 |25-33 |29-31 |

|Age |1 |1 |13,16 |4 |

|Aspirations |4,5 |1 |17,18 |5 |

|Change Agent Contact |69, 70 |3 |46,47,48 |34-35 |

| |89 |4 |16,15 |40-41 |

|Communication |22-37 |1 |40-38 |11-15 |

|Cosmopoliteness |6-9 |1 |19-24 |5-7 |

| |18 |1 |36 |9 |

|Credit Orientation |60-62 |3 |34-37 |31-32 |

|Credit |70-80 |3 |49-65 |35-38 |

|Economic Knowledge |81-87 |3 |66-73 |38-40 |

|Education of Family |2, 3 |1 |15,16 |4 |

|Empathy |21 |1 |39 |11 |

| |51, 52 |3 |18,19 |26,27 |

| |68 |3 |45 |36 |

|Farming |91-111 |4 |36-60 |45-49 |

|Innovativeness |39-41 |5 |15,16-23 |50-52 |

| |42-46 |2 |61-66 |23-24 |

|Integration |90-93 |4 |16-18 |41-42 |

| |92 |5 |63,64,65 |38 |

|Interpersonal Trust |47, 48 |3 |13,14 |25 |

| |63, 65 |3 |38-40 |32 |

|Literacy |66, 67 |3 |41-44 |33-34 |

|Mass Media Exposure |22-30 |1 |40-50 |11-14 |

|Media Credibility |38 |1 |59-70 |16-17 |

|Patriarcalism |13-17 |1 |27-33 |8-9 |

|Political Knowledge |96 |4 |35 |45 |

|Risk Orientation |53, 54 |3 |20,21 |27-28 |

|Satisfaction |49, 50 |3 |15-17 |25-26 |

|Social particiation |10-11 |1 |25,26 |7 |

| |12 |5 |13,14 |50 |

|Status |95 |4 |20-34 |24-44 |

|Time Orientation |54-56 |3 |21-24 |28 |

|Use of Agricultural Facilities |88 |4 |13 |40 |

BIBLIOGRAPHY

*Ascroft, Joseph R., Niels G. Rolign, Grahma B. Kerr and Gerald D. Hursh

1969. terns of Diffusion in Rural Eastern Nigeria. Diffusion of Innovation Research project Report II, Department of Communications, Michigan State University, last lansing, Michigan (mimeo).

Herzog, William A., J. david Stanfield, Gordon Whiting, and Lynee Svenning

1968 Patterns of Diffusion in Rural Brazil. Diffusion of Innovations Research Report 10, Department of Communications, Michigan State University, East Lansing, Michigan (mimeo).

Rogers, Everett M. (with Joseph R. Ascroft and Niels G. Roling)

1969. Diffusion of Innovation to Peasants in Brazil, Nigeria and India (mimeo).

* This ordering of authors’ names is taken from the publication itself. It differs from the order on item 11 of the Diffusion of Innovation project bibliography

CODE BOOK

(English Version)

BRAZIL-PHASE II

Heads of Farm Households

DIFFUSION OF INNOVATIONS IN RURAL BRAZIL

Reitoria de Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais

And

Michigan State University

Belo Horizonte, Brazil

September 1, 1966

PHASE II VARIABLES

(Contents of Interview Schedule “A” dated June 27, 1966)

|VARIABLE |QUESTION NUMBERS |

|Achievement Motivation |57-59 |

|Age |1 |

|Aspirations |4,5 |

|Change Agent Contact |69,70,89 |

|Communication |22-37 |

|Cosmopoliteness |6-9,18 |

|Credit Orientation |60-62 |

|Credit |71-80 |

|Economic Knowledge |81-87 |

|Education of Family |2,3 |

|Empathy |21,51,52,68 |

|Farming |97-111 |

|Innovativeness |39-46 |

|Integration |90-93 |

|Interpersonal Trust |47,48,63-65 |

|Literacy |66,67 |

|Mass Media Exposure |22-30 |

|Media Credibility |38 |

|Patriarcalism |13-17 |

|Political Knowledge |96 |

|Risk Orientation |53,54 |

|Satisfaction |49, 50 |

|Social particiation |10-12 |

|Status |95 |

|Time Orientation |54-56 |

|Use of Agricultural Facilities |88 |

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